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I shared some citizen science stories with the Worcester County Beekeepers this past week, and got to catch up with one of my favorite hive detectives: Mary Duane. Long live the bees … and their keepers!

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I shared some citizen science stories with the Worcester County Beekeepers this past week, and got to catch up with one of my favorite hive detectives: Mary Duane. Long live the bees … and their keepers!

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I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: keeping honeybees is much harder than writing about them. In the year since I became a beekeeper, I’ve struggled to keep my very small apiary buzzing. I currently have two hives, but one of them is in trouble. It won’t live through the winter. (Lost its queen, began to dwindle, and is now infested with wax moths. Ugh.)

I’ve decided, though, to keep at it. I love what the hives are teaching me (patience, for one, but also the most amazing things about insect communities and the way they respond to the natural world around them). Also? I found a great message on my answering machine this week. It was from a neighbor, and it went something like this:

Hi, Loree! It’s Craig. I’m calling to tell you a funny story. I was at Ed’s house [note: Ed is another neighbor] over the weekend, and we were relaxing in his yard, and he said, ‘Craig, look at that apple tree. Would you believe that thing has not produced an apple in all the years I’ve lived here? Not one in a decade. And then, this year, BOOM! … apples. Isn’t it the strangest thing? I can’t explain it.’ To which I said, ‘I can: The Burnses keep honey bees now.’

I am proud of my bees. Theirs is not an easy lot, what with having hatched at the exact wrong time to be a honey bee on planet Earth, and, at the same time, being saddled with a fairly inept newbee keeper. Somehow, though, they’ve spent their tumultuous year at my place doing their thing: pollinating plants. I love them for that. I really do.

If you have the interest, I highly recommend you find a mentor beekeeper. Check out their hives. Learn the ropes. When you’re ready, start an apiary of your own. If those ideas feel overwhelming right now, listen to the TED Talk above by Marla Spivak, a honey bee researcher from Minnesota. She gives a great overview of the honey bee crisis, but ends her talk with some hopeful ideas and some really easy things that you can do to help the bees. And, in turn, beef up your neighborhood apple trees.

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Attention teachers and science lovers: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has launched a new website devoted entirely to the award-winning Scientists in the Field (SITF) series. These books for upper elementary and middle school students cover an impressive array of science topics, from honey bees and trash (my two entries in the series, pictured above) to sea horses, wild horses, manatees, tarantulas, anthropology, space exploration, and beyond. The new site includes an overview of the series, including every SITF title, and features sneak peeks from upcoming titles and updates from the authors.

What are you waiting for? Go check it out!

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“Tracking CCD continues to be complex. Despite several claims, we still don’t know the cause …”
Jeff Pettis, USDA press release May 31, 2012

The paperback edition The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe will be released next spring, and I’ve been preparing a research update to include in the backmatter. Which means I’ve been reading up on two years of new CCD research, talking with the hive detectives (Jeff Pettis, pictured above, Dennis vanEngelsdorp, Diana Cox-Foster, and Maryann Frazier), and boiling all the information I collected down into a few succinct and reader-friendly paragraphs.

Sounds like it should have taken a single working day, right? Or maybe two? Ha. It took me over a month. I may be thorough, but I am not fast.

Then again, what is the rush? The results reported in this 2012 paper from hive detectives Jeff Pettis and Dennis vanEngelsdorp were derived from experiments in progress when Ellen Harasimowicz took the photo above … in April 2008. Some things take time. Sometimes thorough is more important than fast.

(That’s my story and I am sticking to it!)

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© Loree Griffin Burns


The White Oak Land Conservation Society's Wildlife Saturdays programming this spring has been dubbed The Bears and the Bees. On March 19, Laura Hajduk, Black Bear Project Leader for the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, talked about her work with black bears here in Massachusetts. And this week, I'll be giving a family presentation on honeybees.

Yes, admission is free.

Yes, you can buy local Worcester county honey at the door.


Come one, come all!



Wildlife Saturdays: Honeybees
A Family Presentation by Loree Griffin Burns
Satuday, April 2, 2011 at 11 am
Holden Senior Center
1130 Main Street
Holden, MA

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© Benjamin Griffin Burns

The bright side of all this snow on the ground in central Massachusetts is the ease with which one can, say, track a porcupine in the woods. The prickly fellow in the photo above, for example, lives behind our house, and we find him most afternoons perched thirty feet above the melting slush, chewing bark and branches in the sun. Seeing him reassures me that spring is on the way, although I don’t believe porcupines are generally considered harbingers of spring. (February in New England can make one see spring everywhere. This I know for sure.)

Other (equally dubious?) signs of spring 'round here include a sudden burst of online activity related to THE HIVE DETECTIVES:

I was a guest blogger at Cynsations yesterday; you can read my post and join the conversation about nonfiction genres here.

Mary Quattlebaum at Washington Parent compiled a nice list of books to help us all welcome the growing season and warmer weather, and she included THE HIVE DETECTIVES. You can her full list of titles here.

And Ricklibrarian posted this nice review at his blog.

I’m heading south for Newport's March Into Reading literacy festival this weekend. I’m betting I’ll see actual grass down there. And maybe crocuses?

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The SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books, coordinated by the wonderful editors at the review journal Science Books and Films (SB&F) and sponsored by the science-loving folks at Subaru, were awarded this past weekend at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In case the abundance of acronyms have you doubting there was much fun to be had, allow me to elaborate …


They painted our book cover onto the hood of a Subaru:

And since I couldn't drive the car inside the convention center, I posed on top of it instead:





Ellen Harasimowicz and I signed books beside it, too:





And I met Ms. Frizzle! Okay, not exactly Ms. Frizzle … but I did meet Joanna Cole and Bruce Degan, creators of the Magic Schoolbus books and SB&F Prize winners in the picture book category (below, right). And I met Sean Connolly, too, the SB&F Prize winner in the hands-on category (below, left). Here we all are clutching our fancy new awards:




Call me crazy, but that was fun!

Thank you to Subaru, AAAS, SB&F, Heather Malcomson, Terry Young, Maren Ostergard and all of the scientists, librarians, editors, and book lovers who helped make this weekend celebration of science books for kids such a blast.


All photos © Ellen Harasimowicz

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If you are a children’s book writer or illustrator, and especially if you live in New England, you may like this bit of bee book trivia: What New England children’s book author/illustrator took the photo on the cover of THE HIVE DETECTIVES?

Answer: Jen O’Keefe!

It turns out that in addition to writing, illustrating, photographing, mothering, and volunteering, Jen keeps bees. (She is hiveless at the moment, but I get the feeling this is temporary.) When she found out I was writing a book about honey bees, she mentioned her hobby and sent me a few photographs. I knew the moment I saw the image above that it would make an amazing cover shot. It’s creepy and mysterious and aesthetically irresistible all at the same time.

The picture is of something called burr comb. Under normal conditions, honey bees shape their honeycomb into flat sheets. Under certain unusual conditions, however, the bees get a little loosey-goosey with their protocols. They’ll build honeycomb into spaces that were never meant to hold it—between hive boxes or inside syrup feeders, for example—and the shapes they come up with can be pretty funky. Several years ago, Jen fed one of her hives some leftover chunk honey (honey containing chunks of wax) inside a box-shaped feeder tray. She went on vacation for a few days and came back to a box-shaped tray full of burr comb. The photographer in her couldn’t resist:

“It was astonishing and gorgeous and I caught it in the nick of time, because [the bees] were grooming the comb for laying. I've still got the feeder in my art studio filled with the burr comb. It’s like a museum piece.”

Here are some more samples of Jen’s work:









Thank you, Jen, for sharing your talents with me, and for letting that unforgettable burr comb grace the cover of THE HIVE DETECTIVES.


All photos © Jennifer L.G. O’Keefe

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© Gerry Burns


That’s editor Erica Zappy and me at the 2007 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards ceremony, where our first book, TRACKING TRASH, was given an Honor Book Award. It was a special night.

TRACKING TRASH was a literal first for both of us: it was the first book I ever wrote, and it was the first book Erica ever acquired on her own. There is nothing like creating a sixty-four page, ten thousand word book illustrated with seventy full-color images by more than twenty different photographers to bond a couple girls. We learned a lot, made a book we are both proud of, and established a great working relationship.

All of which made the creation of THE HIVE DETECTIVES an even more positive experience. This time we pulled together fifteen thousand words and nearly one hundred photographs, and we did it with none of the drama (no lost photographs! no crisis conversations from the top of a London double decker bus!) of our first trip round the bend.

Thank you for everything, Erica. I am looking forward to rolling up our sleeves and getting to work on book number three.

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Photo courtesy of David Miller


I have been planning this series of blog posts since May, when THE HIVE DETECTIVES was released. Somehow, though, the actual writing and posting has been put off as first one thing and then another (and another and another) stole my attention. As the calendar year winds to a close, I’ve decided to put extra effort into finally and publicly thanking the people who helped me bring this new book into the world.

I’d like to start with my friend Linda Miller, who back in 2007, shortly after the publication of TRACKING TRASH, called to ask what I made of the honey bee crisis. To which I replied, “What honey bee crisis?”

And then, like some kind of eye-opening buzz magic, everywhere I turned were stories of honey bees and mysterious disappearances and concern for our food supply. I am not sure why the story hadn’t registered with me prior to that talk with Linda, but by the time the article she’d clipped from The Christian Science Monitor arrived in my mailbox, I was in too deep to turn back.

Within months I was registered for bee school at the annual conference of the Eastern Apiculture Society, where I met Dennis vanEngelsdorp. (He went on to star in the book.) I took more classes, joined a beekeeping club, infected photographer Ellen Harasimowicz with my honey bee mania, and began traveling the eastern seaboard to talk with bee wranglers and bee scientists involved in the CCD story. The journey from Linda’s question to a published book was a long and intense one, but I have not forgotten where it began: a conversation with a friend.

Linda still calls to ask interesting questions, and she sends handwritten notes by regular mail as well, usually tucking into the envelope a newspaper clipping or two. Not all of these lead to book projects, of course, but each and every one engages my mind. Which, come to think of it, is just the sort of thing Linda strives for: encouraging people to think.

Thank you, Linda, for asking the question that got me thinking about honey bees. Thank you for sending me notes and articles and ideas. And most of all, thank you for being my friend.

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© Ellen Harasimowicz



If you read this recent New York Times article on Colony Collapse Disorder and honey bees, please take a moment to also read this Fortune online article about important information missing from the Times report.

Very. Important. Information.

And if you are at all confused, I'd highly recommend the original PLOS One article, which details the work in question. (Warning: this is pretty technical stuff.)

The bottom line is that we simply don't know yet what is causing Colony Collapse Disorder. But we do know a lot more than we did four years ago, when the CCD mystery began to unfold. We know for sure that "our world is a dangerous place for honey bees, and that it will take a Herculean effort on the part of all humans--people who keep bees, people who study bees, and even people who read about bees--to see them through."

Long live the bees ...



Edited to add: The NYT article is apparently only available online to subscribers.

Edited further to add: That quoted bit is from THE HIVE DETECTIVES. But you knew that, right?

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I was tickled to find out today that THE HIVE DETECTIVES has been named a finalist for the 2011 AAAS/Subaru Science Books & Films Prize for Excellence in Science Books. This mouthful of a prize was created six years ago in order to "encourage outstanding science writing and illustration for children." Here's the complete list of nominated titles in all four categories:


Children's Science Picture Book

Bones. Steven Jenkins. (Illus.) Scholastic, 2010.

Lizards. Nic Bishop. (Illus.) Scholastic, 2010.

Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge. Joanna Cole. (Illus. by Bruce Degen; from the Magic School Bus Series.) Scholastic, 2010.

Why Do Elephants Need the Sun? Robert E. Well. (Illus.) Albert Whitman & Company, 2010.


Middle Grades Science Book

The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe. Loree Griffin Burns. (Photographs by Ellen Harasimowicz; from the Scientists in the Field Series.) Houghton Mifflin, 2010.

Kakapo Rescue: Saving the World's Largest Parrot. Sy Montgomery. (Photographs by Nic Bishop; from the Scientists in the Field Series.) Houghton Mifflin, 2010.

The Secret of the Yellow Death: A True Story of Medical Sleuthing. Susan Jermain. Houghton Mifflin, 2010.

The Story of Snow: The Science of Winter's Wonder. Mark Cassino and Jon Nelson. (Illus. by Nora Aoyagi.) Chronicle, 2009.


Young Adult Science Book

The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference. Alan Boyle. Wiley, 2009.

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements. Sam Kean. Little Brown, 2010.

Every Bone Tells a Story: Hominin Discovery, Deductions, and Debates. Jill Rubalcaba and Peter Robertshaw. Charlesbridge, 2010.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Rebecca Skloot. Random House, 2010.


Hands-On Science Book

The Book of Potentially Catastrophic Science. Sean Connolly. (Illus.) Workman, 2010.

Insect Detective. Steve Voake. (Illus. by Charlotte Voake.) Candlewick, 2010.

Nature Science Experiments. Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen. (Illus. by Edward Miller; from the MAD Science Series.) Sterling, 2010.

You Are the Earth: From Dinosaur Breath to Pizza from Dirt. David Suzuki and Kathy Vanderlinden. Greystone, 2010.



Happy dancing in the Burns house today!

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Adorable honey bee by Kathy, GFL librarian


This Thursday night I’ll be launching THE HIVE DETECTIVES … again.

I know! Crazy! But here’s the thing: I only get one book launch every three years or so. I should totally make the most of the opportunity, right? Plus, I am re-launching* for a great cause: the Gale Free Library (GFL) in Holden, Massachusetts.

Soooo … if you are free this Thursday, consider joining photographer Ellen Harasimowicz and I for an evening of buzzy celebration. We’ll be sharing some stories from our days researching THE HIVE DETECTIVES, selling copies of the book, and signing them, too. All proceeds will be donated directly to the Gale Free Library. Here are the details:

THE HIVE DETECTIVES Book Launch and Library Fundraiser!
Thursday, May 27, 2010
6:30-8pm
Gale Free Library
23 Highland Street
Holden, Massachusetts

We hope you can join us! And please spread the word!



* Our first launch raised $380 in honor of the Beaman Memorial Library in West Boylston, Massachusetts. If you're interested, you'll find details here and here.

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My friend and critique partner, Loree Griffin Burns, has written a book that I've been waiting and waiting and waiting to share with you, and it's out now.  It's called THE HIVE DETECTIVES: CHRONICLE OF A HONEY BEE CATASTROPHE, and it's about the mystery of honeybee colony collapse and what scientists are discovering about it.  It's part of Houghton Mifflin's Scientists in the Field series, and like Loree's TRACKING TRASH, it is told in a narrative nonfiction style that is impossible to put down. The photography is amazing, too. Here's the cover...



Isn't that just stunning?  The inside is full of more amazing photographs and information that is so, so important to those of us who wonder about our environment, our interactions with nature, and where our food comes from, too.  This is a great book, well-written and compelling and fascinating, and it's an important book, too.  Don't miss it.

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What does the average children’s book author do on the day her new book is released? This one will be planting strawberries. (The plants arrived last Wednesday and they simply cannot sit in the crisper drawer another day. They can’t!) So, drizzle or not, out to the garden I go. But first, some buzzy delights, in honor of the day ….

These lovely photographs were sent to me by readers over the last few weeks. These readers happen to be my friends and family, but I like to think that complete strangers will soon be getting the same pleasure from holding and reading (and building Lego beehives around!) THE HIVE DETECTIVES.

Also, some happy THE HIVE DETECTIVE review tidbits:

“A fascinating book from the Scientists in the Field series.”
Booklist, Starred Review

“Readers … will be well served by this example of a scientific mystery still unsolved.”
Kirkus, Starred Review

“In yet another excellent entry in the series, Burns tells … a dramatic scientific mystery, carefully leading readers through the unfolding of the crisis and the attempts to solve it”
The Horn Book

“Ellen Harasimowicz's photographs are vivid and revealing; and Loree Griffin Burns' text is clear, engrossing, and easy to follow. Given the ease to which the next epidemic of Colony Collapse Disorder might so quickly plunge us all into the midst of a planetary food supply catastrophe, THE HIVE DETECTIVES is certainly the most important children's book I have so far read this year.”
Richie Partington, Richie’s Picks

And, finally, a flashback to the release of my first book, TRACKING TRASH:




My goodness, a lot changes in three years!


More formal release festivities for THE HIVE DETECTIVES are coming soon to two marvelous central Massachusetts libraries. You can find out more about those celebrations here. I wish every single one of you could join us.

Happy Monday!

Buzz! Buzz!


Edited to add: Just look at what Jama Rattigan has done. Just look! Thank you for all of this lovely buzzy-ness, Jama. You have made my drizzly book release day a smashing success, honey. Thank you!

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What do you think?

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Yesterday Ellen and I took a field trip to the home of beekeeper Mary Duane. We were collecting images for the bee book and I stumbled into what seemed to be great luck…

We were hoping to capture “the perfect sting” image: a honey bee with stinger inserted in human skin and sting gland and entrails readily visible. You will recall we attempted this image once before, using my forearm for the “human skin” bit. But that bee, in her death throes*, fell out of the frame. Our shot is good, but not perfect.

Yesterday we tried again. And this time … here is where the great luck comes in … Ellen offered to take the hit. (Is she not the best ever?) Ellen is sensitive to hornet stings and has not yet been stung by a honey bee, but she was determined to just get the whole sting thing over with. “I’ve got my Epi-pen,” she said. “Let’s do it.”**

And we did. Mary caught us a bee with her tweezers. Ellen rolled up her sleeve. I held Ellen’s camera at the ready. Bee abdomen was pressed to human arm. Bee stung. Human winced. Writer (emphasis here on writer) snapped photos.

The good news is that Ellen hardly reacted to the sting at all. And, technically, I got the shot. It's just that the shot is, well, not anywhere at all near in focus. Sigh.

Guess who got to be “human skin” the second time?








* After stinging, when the bee attempts to flee the scene, her sting gland and guts are ripped from her body. She dies from these wounds, which is why honey bees can only sting once.

** Please note we are not crazy. Every bee expert we have spoken to has assured us that it is highly unlikely for a person who is sensitive to wasp and/or hornet venom to also be sensitive to honey bee venom.

*** Okay. Maybe we are crazy.

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Hello from Pennsylvania.

I will be here all week, along with photographer Ellen Harasimowicz, researching and collecting images for THE HIVE DETECTIVES. We set out on Sunday morning and have had an amazing couple days … of near-torrential rain.

For the record, bees do not like the rain. It wets their wings and makes it hard to fly. And so they mostly stay inside the hive.

Also, for the record, bees do not like to have their hives disturbed when they are hunkering down during a rainstorm. It makes them angry.



And so we spent most of yesterday indoors. Luckily there is a lot of interesting stuff going on inside the Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, even on a rainy day. Here is a shot of Ellen at work. The bee scientist is Nathan Rice, who was kind enough to walk us through a day in his lab life. Nathan even stung himself—twice—so that Ellen could photograph the sting process. And then, because I am the sort of gal who is willing to sacrifice for her art, Nathan held a bee to MY arm so that I could live the sting process. Seriously. I let myself be stung by a bee. And we have a picture. And it is pretty cool.

Today we are shooting in another bee lab and, if the weather holds, in a commercial bee yard. This is the day we will break out the bee suits.

Have I ever mentioned here how much I love my job?

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Want to see what celebrity you look like? Click here, upload your photo, and be prepared for the results.

I wondered how correct my casting of Hugh Grant as Herman Munster was (see earlier post), so I ran Herman's picture through the database.

Hugh wasn't even on the list! Myfacerecognition-celebrity matches posted Magic Johnson as the celebrity who most resembled Herman. John Travolta, Dr. Phil, and Matt Dillon were on the list, too. But the most surprising Herman Munster look-alike was Meg Ryan, who appeared on the list above Matt Dillon!

So Meg, think about it. Men have traditionally played the best monsters: Frankenstein, Dracula, and Hannibal Lecter--even King Kong and Godzilla were male. The time is now, Meg! Break this field open for women. Hermoine Munster. Herman Megster.

Go for it, girl!

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